Friday, February 15, 2013

A pair of Lebanese journalists from opposing sides of the
Lebanon/Hizballah divide, on set recently at Hizballah’s Al Manar TV for a chat
about Syria, lost control of
themselves, going after one another with fury. Or rather, one of them—the
one associated with the March 8 Movement, the pro-Assad, pro-Hizballah, anti-freedom
face of Lebanon—went after the other—the one affiliated with the March 14
Alliance, the anti-Syrian, anti-Hizballah movement born during the Cedar
Revolution of 2005, after Bashar Assad had Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri
assassinated—accusing him of having been in cahoots with Ariel Sharon, of
kissing the hands and feet of Condoleezza Rice, and of recruiting “collaborationists”
for Israel.

Thanks to MEMRI, we non-Arabic–speakers have all this and
more on tape. At one point, Mr. March 8 Movement becomes so enraged he is no
longer able to hold his water—literally—and splashes it in the face of the
Sharon-loving, Condi-kissing, collaborationist, Mr. March 14. He douses his
host, too, whose only (apparent) crime is the immense ludicrousness of trying
to force the pair to shake hands.

This would be very amusing—a pox on all your houses,
whatever your dates—if the apparition of our new secretary of state, John Kerry,
weren’t hovering over the proceedings, and any others involving the Middle
East—in particular Syria, and what to do about his dear
friend the Butcher of Damascus—like a fog of grease in an unvented kitchen. “This
is a complicated time in the world,” he said just
the other day, and so it is, indeed. Still, “We’re taking a look at what steps, if any, diplomatic
particularly, might be able to be taken in an effort to try to reduce that
violence and deal with that situation.”

Been down that road so long, it looks just like Hizballah hell to me. But he’s secretary of state, and he’s a foreign policy expert, and he’s married to Heinz Ketchup, so what do I know?